I know, I know, I know
by stolen-whispers
Summary: Veronica and Logan in two lists.


"Damaged people are dangerous." – this is a quote from _There and Back Again_ by GwenhwyfarRose.

"I would rather have the worst of you than the best of anyone else." Is from Chocolate by Erin Ivey

The title is a Tegan and Sara song.

Logan

He could take Weevil. He knows he could. _Damaged people are dangerous_. Because Weevil doesn't know shit. Logan knows this. But they both loved the same girl. They both love the same girl and if it came down to it, he knows that there is one thing he and Weevil will always be able to do together and that's protecting Veronica. And when it comes down to it he'd rather have someone who loves her by his side than someone with brute strength. And Weevil's got both. It works out.

If it weren't for Lilly, his type would have been girls like Kendall – voluptuous and sexy and empty. But Duncan was his best friend and he saw her all the time in that tiny silver bikini and when she sat on his lap he felt dangerous and alive, even if he was 14 and didn't know what that meant. He thinks that it was the first time Lilly's fingers zipped over his scars and didn't hesitate or stop that he developed a taste for spitfire blonds. She destroyed any power his father might have had over him when she added the half moon scars of her nails to his back.

That being said, Veronica is not Lilly, and contrary to popular belief, Lilly was a warm up act to Veronica, not the other way around. Lilly was all sparkle and shine – fabulous. And she loved him and she screwed him literally and figuratively and sometimes it hurt and sometimes he hated her, but she couldn't kill him. Veronica is fire, white hot and always burning, and when she looks at him like she's never hated something so much in her life he can feel himself dying inside. And sometimes he wonders if he'll ever be good enough to be alive again.

Veronica saved Logan when she let him torture her. He thinks she probably knows, on some subconscious level that if she had cried, if she had showed up at the Echolls residence screaming and crying and choking on her pain, there would have been nothing for it but to pull her into his arms, let her scar her frustration onto his chest, murmur softly into her hair and hope the vibrations calmed her because the words surely meant nothing. And after that he would have nothing to fill him, nothing to block the pain and he surely would have jumped.

Logan always loved Veronica. Before, he didn't know it. After, he hated himself too much to let something like that fill him. But Lilly always knew and she would torture him with it.  
_Don't Duncan and Veronica look good together" _she would murmur in his ear when she was especially displeased with him. Minor fights were screaming. When she was really mad, she stabbed him with her words_. I think they'll get married and make the cutest babies. Can't you just see it?_ He could almost hear in her words – you'll never be good enough. She'll never love you too.He just didn't know it at the time. He didn't know what the twisting in his gut meant but he hated it. And he hated her.

Logan knows that he doesn't wish that Veronica was the one who had died. He knows (even as he throws verbal bullets at her with everything he has, trying with no reserve to draw blood and tears and receiving only bullets back) that that was never true. He wishes he didn't see those thoughts in her eyes.

He uses people like Parker and Hannah (pastel impressions, beautiful in their own right but nothing in comparison to sharp lines and deep colors) to perfect being a boyfriend. Watch how Veronica reacts to them, watch how she reacts to him, solve eternal mysteries. He always ends up caring about them more than he'd like, and not enough to keep them around. He sends them away with a picture and a little piece of his dignity.

Logan knows that when Veronica commits, she commits. They love and they love and they love before the Russian mob comes after him. And they get past it and they fight and they come out unscathed and that's when he asks her to buy a house with him. And she says yes. And it's more than any ardent confession.

Veronica

"I would rather have the worst of you than the best of anyone else." Never have song lyrics hurt so much to hear. Because it was true. And every time she looked at Piz, even after they had broken up, she felt a burning sensation in her stomach because the best of everyone else didn't come close to the worst of Logan and she was sure that everything in the way she moved and talked told them that.

Veronica knows that Logan did not sleep with Madison to hurt her. She knows, objectively, that they were broken up, that she has no claim on his actions and that he was probably so drunk he couldn't see straight. But the images seemed burned into her skull and she feels like Madison won and that can't ever happen. So no one wins.

She knows that the images aren't burned, just there floating and fading and that with every day that passes she gets a little bit closer to kissing him senseless.

Veronica knows Lily was a coldhearted bitch. She broke Logan's heart; she slept with his father and countless others. She never would have been friends with Wallace or Mac. She would have dismissed Piz and Parker in about two seconds; they wouldn't even deserve her malice. But she also knows that she loves Lilly. She loves her and she misses her and she wants her to come back, whatever that means. And she knows Lilly loved her, never betrayed her. That makes her selfish, but Logan got to break her, and she gets Lilly's love. It's even, she thinks.

The difference between Logan and her is that she is always looking for normal. He's accepted that they are fucked up, that the only way to get through life is being fucked up together. Its only when she realizes that he's right that she realizes, also, that she isn't resigned to their future. Their future is the only possible outcome.

What she had with Duncan is over. It's been over since he broke up with her and forgot to tell her about it. But she has craved the simplicity of the surface ever since Lilly (her mother's first drunken phone call) and it takes dating Duncan and Piz to bring her even the semblance of what she once had. And she'll (try to) love them for that alone.

It's Piz, however, that makes her hate trying. Suddenly, she's tired. Her dad lost the Sheriff's race and the fought and yelled and she cried and now they're okay again, but she's tired and trying takes work and when Logan beats his face in, she really has to try to find her anger. And when Logan beats Gorya's face in, she tries and tries and tries and can't find anything but love and lust, including Piz's eyes or images of Logan and Madison. She knows now it's just a matter of days.

She knows it's her turn, that Logan has bearing little pieces of his soul to her since before Lilly died. She's given him a little bit in response, mysteries she's already solved, tears he shares. She knows that this time she's going to have to make the big gesture, give the drunken speech, slay the mobsters. She'll start with that impossible sentence. "I love you."

Veronica knows that when it works, it works. And they can set the whole world on fire. And it takes her a couple years of perfect before she decides she is never going to let him go. Of course, that's when something bad happens but…

Veronica knows that once she makes a decision, she doesn't go back.


End file.
